


my god has a trot in her walk

by starstrung



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Picnics, Pining, jester bosses beau around and beau likes it, some flavors of unrequited dairon/beau
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:27:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22533229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starstrung/pseuds/starstrung
Summary: Why couldn’t the Gentleman’s daughter be dull and well-mannered and utterly boring? It would have made Beau’s life a hell of a lot easier.
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett
Comments: 26
Kudos: 347





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This AU is mostly canon compliant except that Jester gets raised by the Gentleman, and Beau gets sent by the Cobalt Soul to pretend to be Jester's lady's maid. The premise is inspired by Fingersmith/The Handmaiden, but doesn't follow their plots closely at all and there's no need to be familiar with them. Thanks to all the usual suspects on Twitter for letting me yell at them about this. 
> 
> If playlists are your thing, [here's one](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0SPmxCcC05EqL5sBaaPRVF?si=2k3gItseSauCsqTYeZUdrw) I made for Beau and Jester while writing this.

Beau should have realized it was going to be a shitty day when she walked into her sparring session, and Dairon was there instead of her regular Cobalt Soul instructor.

“Well, this is a surprise,” Beau says, and hides her reaction by concerning herself with the wraps on her arms, tying them carefully all the way up to her elbows. “Haven’t seen you in a while. Thought maybe you’d forgotten about me. Or died.”

Dairon shrugs in that subtle way that they have, that always manages to look so goddamn elegant. “I had other business to attend to. I’m sorry to have neglected your training, but there were extenuating circumstances that demanded my attention.”

“Right,” Beau says. “I think you mentioned that in your last letter. Which was what, two months ago?” She’s aware that she’s being petulant, but she doesn’t really care. She’s sick of being treated like a child that Dairon gets to dump every time they get tired of her.

Dairon’s eyes flash for a moment, and Beau is sure they’re going to tell her to grow up and stop whining. Instead, they just straighten up from their casual lean against the wall, and say, “Well, let’s see what your progress has been like in my absence.”

Beau squares her jaw and lines up on the training mat. It’s been ages since she’s sparred against Dairon, and she’s forgotten what it looks like when Dairon settles into their fighting pose, how they go from unassuming to downright fucking lethal all in one moment.

Beau throws the first punch, and then it’s on. It’s a good fight, and all the resentment that Beau has been feeling gets replaced by the good peace and quiet of two bodies throwing themselves at each other in a violent dance. Twenty minutes in, and Beau is sore, bloody, and having more fun than she’s had in a _long_ time. 

She’s giving as good as she’s getting. Dairon is bloodied too, is favoring their left side a little. Beau feels a spark of pride. _She_ did that. Dairon _has_ to see she’s learned their fucking lessons.

Dairon misjudges a strike, or Beau misjudges a feint — either way, it ends with Dairon’s elbow smashing into Beau’s forehead, sending her reeling. Her ears are ringing, and she can’t see straight. She sits down heavily on her ass.

“Shit,” Dairon says. Dairon has this really low, resonant voice — Beau likes how it goes even lower when Dairon swears, which isn’t often.

Should there be two of Dairon right now? Hah, that’s pretty great. Beau could do a lot of things with two Dairons. I mean, she’d also be fucked, but then that’s kind of the point, right? Beau blinks fuzzily, tries to focus on one of the Dairons, but for some reason, she can’t.

Both Dairons kneel in unison in front of her on the training mat. “That was a harder hit than I intended,” Dairon says. They take Beau’s face in their hands, peering into Beau’s eyes. Beau immediately leans into it, and maybe feels a little ashamed about it — but it’s not like anyone else really touches her with kindness like this. So she’s needy for it, so what? “Are you all right?” Dairon asks.

Beau blinks a little more, and the Dairons resolve in her vision. Her head is clearing too. Now she can see the single Dairon very clearly, still inspecting Beau’s eyes as they focus.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Beau says. There’s blood pooling down her lips from an earlier strike that caught her in the nose. She must look pretty disgusting. She licks her lips, a little more showy in it than she needs to be, and Dairon follows the movement quick with their eyes.

Beau smiles, even though it tears at the broken skin of her upper lip.

“Good,” Dairon says in a clipped voice. They push Beau’s face away with an annoyed flick of their wrist, get back in their defensive position, and Beau gets to her feet — ready to get smeared into the ground again.

She gets a few good hits in. Dairon even grins at her in the middle of one, so quick that Beau barely sees it, but when they straighten out of the ending pose, Dairon looks proud.

“That was good form,” they say. “You’ve improved your stance.”

“Hey, I have a good teacher,” Beau says, and gets Dairon’s hand squeezing at her shoulder as a reward for it.

“That’s all for now,” Dairon says, dismissing her.

“So that’s it?” Beau asks, before Dairon can make their quick getaway.

Dairon must hear the challenge in Beau’s voice because they suddenly look very unamused. “Do you have something you want to add, Beauregard?” Dairon says, their voice gone cool and dangerous. Don’t cross me, it says.

Beau _loves_ crossing Dairon. She steps up so that she’s chest to chest, nose to nose with Dairon, stares them down. Dairon doesn’t fucking flinch, doesn’t even look taken aback. They wait, almost patiently, for Beau to say her piece. Of course, it’s only after Beau says her piece that they’re going to strike.

“I’m sick of this,” Beau tells them. “I’ve been in training at the Cobalt Soul for long enough. You show up every few months to give me an ass-beating and then fuck off to the warfront where the action is. Send me out into the field. You know I’m ready.”

Beau is waiting for Dairon to sneer and turn her down, to grind her into the dust and leave, like they always do. Instead, to her shock, Dairon’s shoulders sag almost imperceptibly, some of the fight going out of them. Suddenly, they just look tired, and Beau wonders when the last time they slept was.

“Actually,” Dairon says, “there is something that I need your help on.”

They go to the communal baths. It’s a large steam-filled room with bright blue tiles and they have it mostly to themselves, just a few monks soaking in the corner. Dairon undresses without any apparent shyness or fuss and slips into the hot water. 

Beau follows their lead, trying to look as nonchalant about it as they do. Not that Dairon’s paying attention. She sinks into the bath, hissing as every single bruise and ache on her body melts under the hot water. She uses handfuls of the steaming water to carefully clean the blood off her face, and it drifts off in rusty flakes.

Dairon somehow manages to look equally imposing while naked and in a bath as they do while in full Cobalt Soul regalia, scolding Beau for holding her staff wrong.

“Have you heard of the Gentleman?” Dairon asks her.

Beau tells them that she hasn’t.

Dairon sighs. “His real name is Babenon Dosal. By all accounts, your average rich merchant and art dealer. He owns an estate in the countryside outside of Zadash. His only family is a daughter who he keeps very hidden and well-protected. She has never left the estate. The girl’s mother, Marion Lavorre, lives in Nicodranas. The girl has her name.”

“Why does the Cobalt Soul care about him?” Beau asks.

“Because in his free time,” Dairon says, “he runs the Myriad.”

“The crime syndicate?” Beau says. “No fucking way. I thought the Empire got rid of them ages ago.”

“They survived in the shadows, apparently,” Dairon says. “We’ve been keeping an eye on them, but they haven’t been a threat. Lately, however, we’ve been receiving alarming reports that they might be trying to expand, make deals with the House Mardun, and try to take a more active role in influencing Zadashian trade deals in their favor.”

“Okay,” Beau says. “So what do you need me for?”

Dairon leans forward and fixes her with an intense, piercing look that somehow makes Beau feel even nakeder than she already is. “We are painfully uninformed about what this deal may entail for Zadash. The Cobalt Soul must have more information. You will disguise yourself as a lady’s maid for the Gentleman’s daughter. You will gain her trust, and then use the skills I have taught you to find out more about this deal. Think you can do that?”

Beau raises her chin, not too happy about the slightly patronizing twist Dairon puts on those last words. “Yeah, I can fucking do that,” she says.

“Good,” Dairon says, eyes glittering with some emotion that Beau doesn’t know how to parse. “Then you and I have a lot of work to do.” They stand up out of the bath, and Beau, unprepared for this sudden eyeful, looks away.

Dairon trains her harshly over the next two weeks, but not in fighting or espionage. Instead Beau learns how to serve a lady, how to stand, how to talk, how to walk, even. How to blend in, how to be invisible. It’s not that bad, although it’s nearly impossible for her to keep all the forms of address clear in her head. The worst part is the costume. The first time she has to put on a dress, simple gray, with a white apron, Beau nearly puts a stop to the whole thing right then and there.

Dairon sees the look on her face and gives her one in return. “Get that frown off your face, Beauregard. You asked for this. Show me you are capable and next time, you can join me at the warfront. As an Expositor.”

Beau gapes at them. “You mean it? You’re not just saying that, right?”

There’s just the barest hint of a smile on Dairon’s face. “There’s only one way for you to find out. You have one month. Don’t let me down.” 

The Gentleman’s estate is fucking massive. It takes the carriage an hour just to reach the house, and then the house is _so_ huge and imposing, towers rising up out of it like teeth against the dark sky, that Beau feels a chill go up the back of her neck. She’s not superstitious or anything — she leaves that kind of shit to her father — but this place looks haunted as hell.

The housekeeper, who looks very annoyed at having to stay up late to let her in, leads Beau silently up the stairs. The house looks even bigger and more foreboding from inside, dark panelled hallways twisting out of view, staircases emerging from distant shadowed corners, doorways that lead to huge halls with vaulted ceilings. Even Zadash’s Cobalt Soul temple, with its towers and domes and carved stonework walls has nothing on this place.

She hears laughter echoing from above, and turns her head to look. For a moment she catches the movement of cloth on one of the upper floors. Beau suddenly has the feeling she’s being watched.

“You’ll sleep here,” the housekeeper says quietly, and gestures to a small room, barely bigger than a closet. The only thing in it is a narrow bed and a small chest for her belongings. The housekeeper points to the room across. “That is Miss Lavorre’s room. You will attend to her in the morning.”

And that’s it. She leaves. 

Beau still feels like she’s being watched. She stands in her tiny, unlit room with its prison cell window and changes into her sleep clothes. The room is drafty and cold, and she burrows under the sheets and tries to sleep.

It feels like she’s barely closed her eyes before a sound wakes her up. It’s the sound of something scratching at the door of her bedroom.

Suddenly every muscle in her body is on high alert. Beau gets out of bed and stands there with her heart hammering, and listens to the sound of nails against wood.

It stops. She waits a long minute, but the sound doesn’t come back. Was it a rat? Another servant playing tricks on the new girl? Beau opens the door and peeks out into the hallway, just in time to see a ghostly white figure walk straight through the wall and into Jester Lavorre’s room.

Then Beau hears the scream.

She goes tearing across the hallway and into the room, all her training on how to be a proper maid forgotten — her fists are out and ready and she is prepared to punch this motherfucking ghost in the face.

She stops in her tracks. The room is empty. All she sees is a girl sat up on the bed, clutching the blankets to her chest.

“Did you see that ghost?” the girl says, her voice shaking.

“Uh, I did, miss,” Beau says, lowering her fists. “I saw, well... I saw something. Do you know where it went?” It’s dark in the room, and so all she can really see of the girl, who she assumes is Jester Lavorre, is her outline. Those horns — she’s definitely a tiefling.

Jester shakes her head. “No, it just vanished. I’m too scared to go to sleep by myself now, so you have to sleep with me, okay?”

“Oh,” Beau says, not expecting this. The bed sure is big enough. It’s plush and fancy, has a whole canopy and everything, and an extravagant amount of pillows. It looks way comfier than Beau’s own bed. “Sure,” she says, and gets into the bed. 

“I’m Jester Lavorre,” Jester says, in the dark.

“I know, miss,” Beau says. “My name’s Beau. I’m your new lady’s maid.” Beau can’t see Jester at all, but with a jolt, she realizes that Jester probably can see her face just fine. Tieflings have dark vision, don’t they? Fucking unfair.

“Beau,” Jester says, as if testing it out. She doesn’t really sound scared anymore. In fact, her voice sounds like she’s smiling. “It’s nice to meet you. Good night!”

She begins snoring immediately. Beau stares up at the bed canopy for about an hour processing this before she falls asleep.

Jester’s nothing like what she expected. When Dairon described her, Beau pictured a well-bred, sheltered, shrinking violet of a girl. Jester, she finds, is none of those things. In fact, she’s probably one of the loudest, most vibrant people Beau has ever met.

Dairon also didn’t mention that Jester is _hot_.

The first time Beau gets a really good look at her is in the morning. Beau wakes up with a start and sits up to sunlight streaming into the room. It’s a beautiful room — embroidered cushions and velvety armchairs and brightly brocaded curtains. Sat at the vanity, is Jester, already dressed. She’s a blue tiefling, shorter than Beau, with small horns curling out of her hair.

“Oh, you’re awake,” Jester says, and smiles warmly at her. It’s a punch to the gut. Beau falls terribly, awfully, horribly in love in that moment.

Beau realizes that she’s staring, and leaps out of the bed clumsily, knocking about a half dozen pillows onto the ground as she does so. She’s pretty sure there’s drool caked on her face. So much for first impressions. “Sorry J— miss. Sorry, miss. I was just super tired from yesterday. Won’t happen again.”

“You can call me Jester,” Jester says. “Get dressed and then bring breakfast up, okay? We have so much to do today!”

“Right, miss, I mean, Jester. Right.” Beau does a wobbly curtsy (Dairon would kill her if they saw it), and then rushes out of the room.

It takes her ages to find the kitchens. She has to ask for directions eight times, and then one of the housemaids just gives up and marches her there herself. 

The cook hands her a tray of breakfast and tea that’s already been set aside for her. Beau looks down at it with horror.

“This is all pastries. This is literally just pastries. She eats this _every day_?” Beau says.

The cook shrugs. “I put an apple there sometimes, but she never eats it.”

“Put an apple on,” Beau tells him firmly. “Actually, two apples. Uh, please.”

The cook gives her a look, but he sets two apples down on the tray. Beau takes this back up. She gets turned around two times, but finally manages to find the portrait of a cross-eyed tiefling holding a dog that she remembers seeing outside Jester’s room. She pushes open the door with a sigh of relief.

“Oh, finally, I’m _starving_ ,” Jester says, immediately taking the tray from Beau’s hands. She takes it to the bed and starts on the pile of pastries. Beau hovers by the door, uncertain of what she’s supposed to do.

Jester pats a spot on the bed next to her. “Come up here with me, there’s plenty of pastries for you too,” Jester says, pouring out the tea. “Also you can have these apples.” She rolls the apples to the side with a look of distaste.

Beau climbs up onto the bed. “You know, you should really eat something other than pastries for breakfast.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Jester says cheerfully. She hands Beau a cup of tea. It’s milky and sweet, which isn’t how Beau usually likes it, but she drinks it anyway.

Beau hasn’t eaten since lunch yesterday, so she’s starving. She finishes all the rest of the pastries and both apples and also the small pot of oatmeal which Jester didn’t touch. It’s much better than the food they give monks at the Cobalt Soul, and at the end Beau gives a satisfied belch before she realizes that’s definitely not appropriate lady’s maid behavior.

To her surprise, Jester just laughs with genuine delight, and then belches right back. It’s much louder than Beau’s.

“Impressive,” Beau says.

“Thank you, thank you very much,” Jester says, doing a little bow. It’s really cute.

Jester has a very busy schedule, Beau finds. First, she has Beau run back to the kitchen to drop off the dirty tray, and then she instructs Beau in making the bed, which apparently requires a lot of fluffing of pillows and smoothing of covers. Just when Beau is about to lose her patience and tell this impossible rich girl to stop harassing her, Jester smiles encouragingly at her and says, “Yes, just like that, Beau, you’ve got it.” and Beau forgets to be angry.

After that, Jester has lessons. They go to a huge library with tall arching windows and towering bookshelves and a tutor comes by to teach Jester maths and history and what sounds like Celestial. 

Beau’s job is to stay nearby in case Jester needs anything, apparently, which she thinks is pretty useless. She wishes there was a way for her to sneak off and explore the house, but there’s no way she could get away without being noticed. She listens to Jester’s lessons with half an ear and peruses the bookshelves at the same time. The history is pretty interesting, but the rest of it is decidedly not and reminds Beau of every single lesson at the temple that she fell asleep during and then got yelled at for.

When the tutor’s attention is diverted, Jester locks eyes with Beau and makes a rude gesture directed at the tutor. 

Beau is so surprised she laughs out loud before she can stop herself.

“Is there something amusing?” the tutor asks, turning in his seat to look at her. He’s a stern looking dragonborn who looks like he hasn’t laughed in at least three centuries. Beau gulps.

“No, sir,” Beau says. Behind the dragonborn, Jester silently laughs at her. Beau tries very hard not to glare at her.

“Well, you can wait outside if you’re just going to be a disruption,” the dragonborn says, sniffing at her.

“Oh, right, sure,” Beau says. She does a curtsy and leaves the room, trying to look properly chided and not happy to get out of there.

It’s only after she’s closed the door behind her that she begins to wonder if Jester did that on purpose, to get her kicked out.

Beau doesn’t dwell on it. She might as well snoop around while she still has the time. 

She does her best to keep the hallways straight in her head so that she doesn’t get lost on her way back. The house is much less unsettling in the daylight, although it still gives Beau the creeps — she gets the feeling that many generations of people have lived here and died here, and they weren’t particularly happy while they were doing the living part. 

Beau remembers the ghost. Had she looked angry, or had she looked sad? Beau can’t remember. She’ll have to remember to ask Jester about it.

Beau doesn’t find that much — mostly empty rooms. She occasionally comes across other servants, who look at her strangely but must assume that she’s on some kind of errand, because they don’t stop her. 

And then Beau spots the tabaxi. She’s standing in the hallway outside a room, and is speaking to someone in that room who is hidden from view. She’s dressed simply — a black waistcoat and trousers, nicely made. 

Beau can’t hear the other person, but she can hear the tabaxi.

She says, “Ophelia didn’t seem to think so. She’s on her way here.”

Whoever is in the doorway says something else.

“Yes, sir,” the tabaxi says with a nod. She hands the person in the doorway a vial of rusty-red liquid that looks nauseatingly like blood. With that, the tabaxi turns and leaves, thankfully walking in the other direction as Beau.

This, however, makes it possible for Beau to look into the doorway, and see who the tabaxi was speaking to. It’s a blue genasi — Beau recognizes him as the Gentleman from Dairon’s description of him. He stands in the doorway, the vial in his hands, looking like he’s thinking about something. Beau shrinks into the wall further just in case he looks over at her, but he doesn’t. After a while he retreats back into the room and closes the door.

Beau’s mind races as she makes her way back to Jester. Ophelia. Ophelia Mardun. She’s on her way here, to the house. Beau has no idea _when_ she’s coming. But it sounds like that deal with the House Mardun is definitely happening.

After lessons, Jester wants to eat lunch outside. Behind the house, there’s a walled off garden. It looks a little neglected and overgrown — there are vines creeping everywhere, the brick path is uneven and and a bit crumbly, and the trees are all spilling out in every direction so that the ground is a webwork of crisscrossing roots. It actually looks pretty fucking dope.

Jester sits at a small table under the canopy of a tree, and then looks at Beau expectantly.

“Oh, right,” Beau says, and heads off to the kitchens. A tray is already waiting for her. There’s still pastries on this one, although a lot less than there were during breakfast. Beau can’t understand how one person can eat so many pastries every single day.

She brings the tray over to Jester and then hovers next to her. She supposes that lady’s maids usually eat after their ladies do. Maybe Jester was just feeling generous with her breakfast.

“What are you doing, come sit down,” Jester says impatiently, and pats the chair next to her.

“Oh,” Beau says, taking a seat. “But there’s only one set of cutlery.”

Jester shrugs, and hands Beau a sandwich. “There’s always too much to eat. Besides, who am I going to talk to?”

Who did you talk to before I came, she wants to ask. 

Jester tucks into the plate of sandwiches, and Beau follows her lead, eating it with her hands. The soup is a bit tricky since there’s only one bowl, but Jester sacrifices her teacup for this. 

It would be a pretty good lunch except that when Jester said that she wanted to talk to her, Beau didn’t realize that Jester wanted to talk _about_ her. She asks question after question about where Beau is from, how she was raised, what her favorite things to do are. Beau tries to answer every question as honestly as she can _without_ mentioning that she’s a monk in the Cobalt Soul, which is nerve-wracking to do while Jester is staring at her like she’s a particularly interesting new toy.

“How do you not _have a hobby_ ,” Jester says passionately. She sinks her teeth into a pastry and doesn’t look away from Beau as she chews.

Beau tries not to squirm. She can’t just tell Jester that her hobby is _punching things_. “I don’t know, I guess I don’t get enough free time for hobbies. I like to read history books?”

This is the correct thing to say, because Jester makes a face and immediately seems to lose interest. Beau lets out a discreet sigh of relief.

“I’m going to climb that tree,” Jester says, and gets up.

“Okay,” Beau says, taken aback. She follows Jester to one of the trees, a particularly gnarled and twisted one. Beau can see why Jester chose it in particular — its branches loop about in odd configurations that make them very tempting to try and sit on.

In fact, it’s clear that Jester has climbed this tree before. She finds the handholds like they’re familiar to her, and before Beau can blink she’s already up in its boughs.

“So what made you come here, then?” Jester asks, looking down upon Beau from her tall perch. “We’re basically in the middle of nowhere, and there’s nothing that happens here. Why would you leave Zadash?”

Not for the first time, Beau wonders just how much Jester knows about what business her father is into. “I heard the position open up, so I took it,” she says, nonchalantly. “Zadash isn’t really all that great, you know.”

“Come up here and tell me about it,” Jester says, and she leans down to offer Beau a hand. Beau could climb up herself easily, but of course a lady’s maid from Zadash probably couldn’t, so she takes Jester’s hand and makes a show of clumsily clambering up to the branch that Jester is sitting on.

As soon as Beau is settled, Jester takes Beau’s hand and puts it in her own lap, and rests her head on Beau’s shoulder. The wind picks up for a brief moment — Jester’s hair blows into Beau’s face and Beau observes, helplessly, that Jester’s hair smells really nice.

Jester hums to herself, quiet and thoughtful. “Zadash sounds so lovely. I bet there are shops and loud parties and singing and, ooh, _knife fights_. In the books I’ve read there’s always a knife fight. You get stabbed and then someone patches you up, but like, in a sexy way.”

Beau tries not to laugh. “That’s really specific. Um, well, I’ve never seen a knife fight, but there are shops. You can buy dresses and trinkets and things like that.”

“What about axes?” Jester asks.

At first, Beau is unsure if she’s heard correctly. “You want an axe?”

“Yes, so I can win at the knife fights,” Jester says. “If you brought an axe to a knife fight, you would win, of course. I don’t know why more people don’t just do that. Then no one would need to patch you up. Although I guess you wouldn’t get the sexy part either.”

Beau can’t help it — she breaks out into a laugh and can’t stop. “Yeah, I mean, you’re not wrong.”

Jester frowns at her, but she begins to laugh as well. “It’s not funny. I really would bring an axe to a knife fight.”

Beau can picture it. Jester would be absolutely formidable with an axe in her hand. Beau wouldn’t want to cross her. “Okay, then you should get an axe. Pretty sure Zadash has axe shops.”

“And what about you?” Jester asks. “You can have a sword.”

Beau makes a face before she can help herself.

Jester laughs. “Okay, no sword then. What about a shield? You could defend me.”

“That’s not that bad,” Beau says. She likes the idea of defending Jester in battle. 

“It’s decided, then,” Jester says, with an emphatic nod. 

Beau nods back, equally as emphatic, even though it’s a promise she knows she can’t keep.

And those are Beau’s duties, basically. Follow after Jester to make sure she has what she needs, fetch her meals from the kitchens, take her clothes away to be washed — Jester is pretty low maintenance, all things considered. 

The thing Jester seems to want from Beau most is her company.

In the evenings, Jester goes to eat dinner with her father, usually. Beau gleans that these are usually pretty casual meals — Jester will go to her father’s study and eat with him there. Afterwards, she’ll come back to her room and draw in her sketchbook or read one of her (many) smut novels, and then they’ll both go to sleep. Jester insists that Beau continues to share her bed because the ghost might come back.

The ghost never does come back, at least not the same ghost that Beau saw before.

Beau does wake up in the middle of the night once, feeling warm and content, to a breeze that blows over her face. She remembers closing the window before going to bed, and she opens her eyes blearily to check if it had blown open during the night.

Instead, she sees a figure in a green cloak bent over Jester.

Beau is too stunned to react. It’s like an invisible force is keeping her down, preventing her from leaping at the figure. The hood obscures their face, and the cloak itself seems to shimmer strangely, as if it isn’t really part of this world. 

It’s bent over Jester as if whispering something in her ear. Beau sees Jester smile in her sleep. She wills herself to react, fighting against the hold keeping her down, but all she can manage is an incoherent croak.

The figure turns its head up to look at her. She can’t see anything of their face under that long sweeping hood except a small portion of their mouth. For a moment they seem to smile. Then, the figure raises one finger up to its face, as if shushing her. Against her will, Beau falls asleep.

She wakes up in the morning as usual. Jester is awake already — she has her feet propped up on her vanity and is pulling on heavy boots.

“Oh, good, you’re up. After breakfast, let’s go climb the mountain, okay?” Jester says.

Beau sits up and rubs her eyes groggily. “I had kind of a weird dream,” she says.

“Ooh, like a _sex dream_?” Jester says.

“Not — oh my god — it wasn’t a sex dream,” Beau says. “It — I can’t remember it now.” She almost has it, for a moment. Something green? And then it slips away.

“I hate it when dreams do that,” Jester sighs. “If my brain went through all the trouble of coming up with a dream, I might as well actually remember it when I wake up, right? It is so annoying. Anyway, go get breakfast, okay? We’re going hiking.”

“Wait, you were serious?” Beau asks. “You have a _mountain_?”

Of course they have a mountain.

Not an entire mountain, Jester explains. About three-quarters of one, but she’s snuck over to the other side plenty of times without being caught, so she considers it a shared mountain.

They set off with a slim box of paints and canvas and a packed picnic basket that Beau had to run down and fetch from the kitchens. It’s early spring, and there’s still a bite to the air, but the fields are so thick with grass and flowers that it looks like an ocean that they have to wade through.

“Do you do this a lot?” Beau says, as she scrambles up steep rocks after Jester, the picnic basket bouncing against her hip. She’s starting to get a little out of breath, but Jester looks like she’s right at home. 

“All the time, when the weather is nice,” Jester says. There’s mud caked on her boots and a light sheen of sweat across her brow and her eyes are bright — she looks absolutely nothing like the girl Beau expected when Dairon first described her. “I get so bored in that house in the winter. It gets so quiet.” Jester says this with a happy cheerfulness, as if she isn’t bothered by it at all. Beau’s heart twists nonetheless.

“But you have your father, right?” she asks. It’s the first time she’s brought up the Gentleman. She watches Jester’s face carefully.

Jester smiles, and it’s nothing like the other cheerful, joyous smiles Beau has seen from her. This one looks there’s a little sadness mixed up with the happy. “Yes, I have him of course,” she says, and then they both focus on climbing.

“Oh sh— wow, you can see Zadash from here,” Beau says, when they get to the top. Here on the summit, it’s high enough for there to be some unmelted snow lingering amidst the newly risen meadow grass. There in the far distance, Beau can spot what is unmistakably the city of Zadash sitting on the horizon. If she squints, perhaps she can see the blue spires of the Cobalt Soul temple.

“It’s the only place on the estate where you can see it,” Jester says. “I come here a lot.” There’s a note of longing in her voice.

“You don’t have to answer this,” Beau says, carefully, “but why doesn’t your father ever let you go to Zadash?”

Jester doesn’t answer for a long time, until Beau is worried that she’s upset her. “I think he’s scared I’ll be hurt,” she says at last. “My mother, she’s—” Jester’s hands twist together. “She can’t go outside very easily. It’s like she feels trapped, except only when she leaves home. I think he’s worried the same thing will happen to me. Also, my father has a _lot_ of enemies.”

Beau lets out a breath. “Does he?” she says.

“Oh, yes,” Jester says confidentially, like it’s something she’s very proud of. “Set up the picnic now, okay? I’m _starving_.” 

Beau unpacks the basket, and Jester sets up her paints. Beau sneaks looks occasionally at what Jester is painting and finds that it’s actually pretty fucking good. It’s a painting of Zadash, cloaked in clouds.

They sit on the blanket in the grass and eat lunch. Beau is absolutely starving after that hike, so she’s pleased to find the basket well stocked with actual, real food — bread studded with dried tomatoes and olives, an entire wedge of cheese, slices of cured ham. There’s a generous bag of cherries too, which Jester digs into with delight.

It’s pretty nice. The grass is soft and sweet-smelling, the air up here in general is just amazing, and Beau’s muscles are pleasantly sore after that hike. She wants to lay up here for hours and maybe let Jester feed her one of those cherries. A girl can dream.

“I never asked you — what was that ghost about?” Beau asks around a mouthful of cheese. “Have you ever seen it before?”

Jester looks genuinely confused. “What ghost?”

Does she not remember? “The ghost from the other night,” Beau tells her. “The first night I was here. We both saw it. White and walking through walls and sh— and stuff? That doesn’t ring a bell?”

Jester makes an almost comical sound of realization. “Oh, _that_ ghost. Right. The ghost from before. _Right_. I remember.”

Jester must see the skeptical expression on Beau’s face because she grins a little sheepishly and tosses her hands up. “Okay, you caught me,” Jester says. “I made up the ghost. I tricked you.”

“How did you even — I _saw_ it walk through a wall. How did you do that?” Beau says. Does this mean Jester is some kind of magic user?

Jester smiles a tiny, secret smile. “Not telling! But it wasn’t a ghost.”

Beau feels herself getting angry. “Then why did you trick me into seeing one? Just to mess with me? You made me think you were scared.”

“Don’t get _mad_ ,” Jester says, laughing. “After all, you’re lying to me too.” She picks up a cherry and puts it in her mouth.

Beau goes cold all over. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re not really a lady’s maid, are you?” Jester says.

“What?” Beau says, careful to sound surprised and maybe just a little bit offended. “Of course I am.” 

She tries to think. What’s Jester going to do? Did she lead her up here to confront her? Beau’s mind flashes to the different possibilities: the Gentleman’s men lying in wait behind some rocks to stab her, Jester pushing her off a cliff, poison in the sandwiches.

Jester doesn’t look too upset. In fact, her eyes light up, and her smile widens. She leans towards Beau until their faces are very close together. “You’re not, though. I _know_ you aren’t. I’m good at this, you know? I can be a detective one day, maybe. I don’t think you’re a lady’s maid, but I don’t know what you are. It’s very exciting for me! This means you’re a mystery that I have to solve.”

Beau hopes she’s not sweating too visibly. “You’re wrong, Jester. I’m definitely a lady’s maid.”

Jester draws back and dusts off her hands. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell my father. Who knows what he would do. Probably chop off your head or something. Well, we better get back before it gets dark, so pack all this up, okay Beau?”

Beau puts the remnants of their lunch back into the basket, and wonders how she’s going to tell Dairon that she’s already gone and fucked it up. Dairon shouldn’t have given her this mission after all.

That night, since the ghost isn’t actually real, Beau tries to argue that she should be sleeping in her own bed, even if it’s way less comfortable than Jester’s.

Jester just looks at her, a little crestfallen, and says quietly, “Okay.”

It takes Beau about an hour of tossing and turning on her cold, hard mattress in her tiny claustrophobic room to realize that the reason Jester tricked her with the ghost was probably because she was _lonely_.

Beau gets out of bed and goes to Jester’s room. Jester sits up immediately — she wasn’t asleep either.

Beau falters. “I thought, well — if you don’t mind, then, I mean—”

“Get in,” Jester says, moving aside the covers for her, and Beau does.

Jester wraps around Beau on the bed as if she’s afraid that Beau will try to leave again. Her tail circles Beau’s ankle and Beau tries very hard not to shiver.

“You’ll stay, right? Promise me you’ll stay?” Jester says, her voice sounding thick.

“I’ll stay,” Beau says, because she can’t bear to say anything else. This is what Dairon wanted, wasn’t it? She was supposed to gain Jester’s trust and use her position to gather intel and it was supposed to be so fucking easy and Beau was going to come out of here with Dairon’s seal of approval and everything would be okay.

So why does she feel so miserable about it?

The next evening, after her lessons are over, Jester announces that they have company for dinner, and she’ll need Beau’s help getting ready.

Beau asks, as casually as she can, “Oh, cool, what kind of company?”

Jester shrugs. “Just some friends of my dad, I think. People he’s doing business with. They came from pretty far away to see him.”

Ophelia Mardun, Beau thinks. It has to be. She’s finally here.

“Your dad get guests like that pretty often?” she asks.

“Sometimes,” Jester says. “Ooh, one time one of them was like, covered in these beautiful tattoos. I want to get a tattoo like that _so_ badly.”

“Tattoos are dope,” Beau says.

Jester looks at her, considering. “Do you have any?” she asks.

Beau shifts uncomfortably. “Uh, no. Not really a thing lady’s maids get.”

Jester smiles a little, like she’s humoring Beau. It’s clear that Jester still doesn’t think Beau is a lady’s maid. Instead of being angry about it, she just seems to find it a curiosity, as far as Beau can tell. “Sure,” Jester says unconvincingly.

Beau lets it go. It could be worse.

Jester throws an absurd number of gowns onto her bed and thus begins the long process of picking one out for her to wear. This, Jester insists, requires Beau’s undivided attention. She has Beau choose her favorites and then Beau has to dress Jester in them — but these dresses aren’t _normal_ dresses, they’re like, strange torture contraptions with about a million moving parts. Beau has no fucking idea how to tie up all the laces and latch together all the hooks and she stands there fumbling with it while Jester’s wearing nothing but a thin white shift, which doesn’t _help_.

“Are you lost or something?” Jester says, sounding distinctly like she’s holding back laughter.

Beau resists the urge to scowl. “This just isn’t the kind of dress I’m used to.”

“Really?” Jester says, innocently. “Papa says they’re in the height of fashion in Zadash right now. I thought you would have seen plenty of these dresses, being a lady’s maid and all.”

For fuck’s sake. “Listen, could you just, uh, tell me which part to do first? Please? I’m sure I can figure it out then,” Beau says.

“Well, that’s all you had to say, Beau,” Jester says generously.

She points Beau to the catches that she needs, instructs her patiently in the correct order of lacings and buttons. After a while, Beau’s hands begin to feel less like clumsy sausages and she gets the hang of it — and then it becomes difficult in an entirely different way because her mind has time to focus on what exactly she’s _doing_ : dressing and undressing Jester. 

There are the rows of buttons in the back which are easy enough, but then there are also the lacings in the front, and this requires Beau to stand pressed up against Jester’s back with her hands around her like a long hug. Jester keeps leaning back against Beau trustingly, guiding Beau’s hands with her own, telling her softly what to do next.

It’s fucking hot. There’s blood thudding in a slow drum through Beau’s ears, and every time her hands brush across Jester’s breasts, a thrill goes through her like she’s done something illicit.

Thankfully, Jester takes pity on her and eventually stops the slow parade of gowns. She settles on a sea-green one to wear, and Beau laces her into it with a hidden sigh of relief.

“How do I look?” Jester says.

She looks beautiful, of course, but Beau already knew that yesterday when Jester was covered in mud and sweat and laying beside her on the grass.

“Really nice,” she manages, and Jester seems to find this acceptable. She goes to the vanity and finishes dusting silvery powder across her eyelids and cheeks.

“You be good, okay?” Jester says. “I’ll see you later, I suppose. Don’t fall asleep, I’m going to need you to take this off of me when I get back.” (Beau’s heart sinks all over again.) “Well, I’m off.” And she leaves.

Beau waits about a minute before she follows her.

Jester is pretty hard to miss, in that elaborate glittering gown. She’s woven delicate chains over her horns and into her hair, and even trailing at a safe distance, Beau can smell her perfume, something sweet and subtle.

She realizes almost too late that Jester has stopped walking, coming up way too close behind her. Beau sees Jester turn like she’s about to look behind her, and she jumps behind a corner just in time.

Ophelia Mardun steps out of the shadows and takes Jester’s hand in hers. She’s a gray tiefling, taller than Jester, wearing a long flowing coat that Beau personally thinks looks kinda fucking badass. She bends down to kiss Jester’s hand.

Beau feels a hot pulse of possessive anger go through her. 

“A pleasure to meet you, Miss Lavorre,” Ophelia Mardun says with a smile. Her teeth are even sharper than Jester’s.

Jester gives a small, tinkling laugh, hiding it behind her hand. Beau barely recognizes it, it doesn’t sound like it could come from Jester. “The pleasure is all mine, Lady Mardun,” she says. 

And Ophelia guides Jester’s hand to settle on her arm and leads Jester into the hall. The double doors close behind them with a soft click.

Beau emerges from behind the corner. She has to find a way to listen in on what’s going on in here. The hallway itself is too exposed, so she tries one of the adjacent rooms. 

It’s empty, a side chamber of some kind. It has a connecting door that goes into the dining hall. She goes to the closed door and presses her ear against it carefully, trying to listen into the conversation.

It’s very muffled, but she’s able to hear the Gentleman say, “—to the partnership between two families.”

“And what a lovely family yours is,” Ophelia says, and Beau’s fingers dig into the wood of the doorframe. She had better not be talking about Jester.

She notices that Jester doesn’t say anything. Beau would have noticed if Jester had said something.

She _does_ notice that someone walks into the room she’s in. She immediately dives away from the door, tries to make it look like she was wiping down a table with her apron.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” a voice says, and Beau turns to see a gray tabaxi. The same gray tabaxi she saw handing a vial of blood to the Gentleman.

“Am I not?” Beau says, and makes her voice sound scared and confused. “I thought I was supposed to be cleaning here. I’m so sorry, I’m new here.”

She thinks it’s worked, because the tabaxi stops looking at her like she’s a threat and starts looking at her like she’s a nuisance.

“No,” the tabaxi says, her tail flicking with annoyance. “I think you should go clean somewhere else, all right?”

“Oh, okay,” Beau says, and meekly makes her way quickly out of the room. She feels the tabaxi’s eyes follow her on her way out.

Jester makes it back to the room pretty late.

“How was it?” Beau asks casually, trying not to make it look like she’d been pacing nervously for hours.

“Papa’s friends talk _so_ much, I thought it would never end,” Jester says, sitting down heavily at the vanity. She slowly begins to take off her makeup.

Jester sighs at her reflection. “It’s been so dry, my lips are so _chapped_ , Beau. How are yours?”

“Oh, I don’t worry about that,” Beau says, shrugging. “My lips are always chapped. It’s whatever.”

“That’s no good,” Jester says, frowning at Beau in the mirror. “You have to take care of them. Let me look.” She gestures for Beau to come to her with a quick motion of her hand.

Beau does, walks to the other side of the room to stand at Jester’s side. Jester gets up from her vanity and, to Beau’s surprise, strokes a thumb across Beau’s lower lip. Beau almost pulls away on instinct, but makes herself stay still.

“Wow, they are _super_ chapped, holy shit,” Jester says, laughing a little. Beau is about to snap at her to tell her to mind her own business, which would _definitely_ be ill-advised, but then Jester is holding a pot of translucent rosy-pink cream, and is smoothing it onto Beau’s lips with her fingers, and she can’t speak at all.

“This will help, although you have to be good about it, okay Beau?” Jester says, sweetly. “Once every night before you go to sleep, at least. I have plenty of this stuff, I can give you a pot or two. This should be okay for now, though. Let me see.” 

Jester puts the pot back down on her vanity and then runs one finger along Beau’s lower lip. Instead of a quick stroke though, she lingers, pressing firmly enough that Beau’s mouth falls open.

Beau swears her heart is beating loudly enough to be audible. Jester has such a strange look on her face, too. The smile is gone, and her eyes are glued on Beau’s lips, like she’s inspecting them for structural flaws.

“Much better. This stuff works really well.” Jester says, her voice gone quiet. She’s standing a lot closer now, her finger still stroking back and forth. “It even tastes like strawberries! Here.” 

And she slides her finger into Beau’s mouth.

Beau can’t help it — she makes a surprised, squeaking sort of noise. Jester’s finger is on her _tongue_ , and distantly she notes that it does in fact taste like strawberries. This observation is drowned out, of course, by the rest of her mind screaming _Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit_.

Jester is still looking at her expectantly, so Beau does the only thing she can think of doing. She closes her lips around Jester’s finger, and sucks on it as delicately as she can.

Jester doesn’t pull away in disgust or yell at her. She doesn’t slap her for being filthy, for being insubordinate. She just tilts her head a little, and slides in a second finger.

Beau is sure, at this point, that she must be shaking. Her legs feel weak, and she has no fucking idea what her face is doing. She belatedly realizes that her eyes have gone half-lidded and out of focus, so she snaps them back open to stare fixedly at a point somewhere behind Jester’s head. 

“It tastes good, right?” Jester says, and if it were anyone else, Beau would have bit their finger by now and then given them a solid punch in the stomach for good measure. Instead, she just nods and hums a yes.

There’s a knock at the door. Jester pulls her fingers out of Beau’s mouth with an audible pop, and this is finally the thing that gets Beau to blush, her face filling with inexplicable heat at just the _sound_. Beau turns away from Jester at once, so that she doesn’t see, and goes to open the door, the taste of strawberries still lingering on her tongue.

It’s the gray tabaxi. Beau stares at her in shock for a moment before remembering and dipping a hasty curtsy.

“Cree,” Jester says, smiling at the tabaxi. “What’s up?” Beau sees her wipe her fingers on the hem of her dress and a rush of heat goes through her all over again.

The tabaxi, Cree, gives a polite bow towards Jester. “I apologize for bothering you at this late hour. I just finished speaking with your father and he wanted me to take care of some business with your lady’s maid. Beauregard, is it?”

Before Beau can answer, Jester says, a little sharply, “What business?” 

“I just need a little bit of her blood, I’m afraid,” Cree says. She turns to Beau. “Perfectly standard, absolutely painless. For security reasons.”

This tabaxi is a fucking blood hunter. Beau should have realized the Gentleman would keep someone like this around. Every crime syndicate worth their salt has one or two on hand. It’s a good way to keep the troops in line if they know they have a blood leash on them.

There’s no way she can give the Gentleman her blood.

“I don’t think—” Beau begins, backing away.

Jester steps forward, interceding between Cree and Beau. “You’re not taking her blood.”

It’s clear that Cree didn’t expect this. Beau didn’t expect it either. They both stare at Jester, but Jester just lifts her chin defiantly and takes Beau’s arm as if to protect her.

“I don’t want you to,” Jester says imperiously. Beau suddenly feels entirely too warm.

“Your father will want to know why. He explicitly said—” Cree says.

“I’ll talk to him,” Jester interrupts. “Good night.”

Cree clenches her jaw for a moment, her eyes lashing between Jester and Beau with evident frustration. But she leaves.

“Um, thank you,” Beau says. She has no idea why Jester just did the thing that she did, but she’s grateful nonetheless.

“Don’t mention it,” Jester says, and then yawns hugely. “Now help me get this off.”

This time, Beau doesn’t mind as much. Jester is sleepy and uncharacteristically quiet, and she lifts her arms when Beau tells her to, and doesn't even make fun of her when Beau fumbles the tricky bits. 

When Beau is done, she smooths her hand through Jester’s slightly mussed hair, even though she doesn’t really need to. Her fingers find the roots of Jester’s horns, and a nervous jolt goes through her when Jester leans her head into her hand with a soft, pleased sigh.

Beau lets her hand drop. “Time for bed?” she asks.

She can just see the curve of Jester’s cheek turning up in a small, happy smile. “Time for bed,” she says.


	2. Chapter 2

Tomorrow is another beautiful day, so they go down to the lake. It’s not a huge lake, by any means, but it's still a little too large to be called a pond. There’s a boat tied to a post waiting for them.

Jester tasks Beau with rowing them around the perimeter while she lays back on a padded quilt with her legs propped up and reads one of her smut books. Beau doesn’t really mind rowing since she hasn’t been able to work out much lately anyway. It’s also really nice out — the sun is warm overhead and the water is clear and still, ruby red dragonflies buzzing low across its surface.

After a while, she realizes that Jester is staring at her over her book. At her arms, specifically. Beau’s rolled up her sleeves a bit for the ease of it, and knows that her biceps must be doing something pretty attractive right now. She’s flexed at herself plenty of times in the mirror to know.

When Jester realizes she’s been caught staring, she turns her attention back to her book.

“Anything interesting happening, then?” Beau asks, smirking a bit.

Jester doesn’t look up. “Yes, actually. I think they’re about to kiss.”

“Oh, that’s pretty exciting,” Beau says.

“Yes. Although sometimes I worry, you know, that kissing isn’t as nice as it sounds in books. I mean if you think about it it’s kind of gross.”

Beau considers this. “Yeah, but the point is that you _aren’t_ thinking about it. It’s way nicer than it is in books.”

Jester deflates a little. “Oh, really?”

Beau stops rowing. “Have you really never kissed anyone before?”

“No,” Jester says, offhandedly. She looks like she’s suddenly very interested in picking at a thread on her skirt. “I’m probably not very good at it.”

Beau tries not to smile, since it seems that Jester is a lot more worried about this than she’s letting on. “It’s not something that you’re automatically good or bad at. You have to practice.”

Jester darts a look at her, and looks away, and then she turns back and _keeps looking_ , and doesn’t say anything. She begins to chew her lip thoughtfully.

Beau suddenly feels nervous. “What?” she asks.

“Will you let me practice on you? Kissing?” Jester says.

“Sure,” Beau says, before she can think about it.

And then Jester is tossing her book to the side, and she’s standing up and walking over carefully to sit next to Beau. Jester leans in and kisses her.

Their teeth immediately clack together. “Oh, that was too hard, wasn’t it,” Jester says, wincing.

Beau lets go of the oars and takes Jester’s face in her hands. “It’s all right. Try it a bit gentler,” she says. “Like this.” And she presses a gentle kiss to the corner of Jester’s mouth. And then another one against her bottom lip. And then a third, right where Jester’s upper lip curves in a cupid’s bow.

She pulls away. Jester’s eyes are wide and she looks stunned. Beau wants to pull her flush with her and lick into that impossible mouth and feel Jester twist in pleasure against her, but she makes herself put her hands back on the oars.

“That wasn’t what I was expecting,” Jester says quietly, touching her lips with her fingers. Beau’s mind unhelpfully chants _I was there, I was there_. “I thought it would be messier.”

Oh, gods, this girl is going to kill her. “It, uh, can be,” Beau says. “If you use your tongue and your teeth and stuff. You don’t want it to be too messy though.”

Jester gets that imperious look on her face like when she’s telling Beau to fetch her a book or unlace her boots or carry something. Beau knows what she’s about to say even before she’s said it. “Show me,” Jester tells her.

So Beau leans in and opens her mouth against Jester’s, which is already open and waiting for her.

 _Fuck_. If Dairon could see her now, she’d be toast. Not that it’s helpful to think about Dairon right now, not when Jester is panting against her, making small noises of surprise and wonder when Beau’s tongue finds hers. Jester very quickly loses her shyness — she clutches at the front of Beau’s dress and they slide off the bench and into the curved part below, where the padded quilt has been laid out. There’s more room here, and Jester settles herself in Beau’s lap and keeps kissing her.

Jester is definitely more enthusiastic than skilled, but Beau can’t really complain — she can’t get enough of the feeling of Jester in her arms. Beau can feel Jester’s breasts pushing up against her own as Jester settles even close to her, and the water rocking the boat rocks them even _closer_ and so Beau’s thoughts eventually just slip into horny static.

She’s just deciding whether or not Jester will let her put her hand up her skirt when the oars slide into the water with a splash.

Beau swears, breaking away from Jester. Both oars have very quickly drifted off from the boat, leaving them stranded.

“Wait here, okay?” Beau says, lifting Jester off her lap. She takes off her boots and her dress and dives into the water.

Fuck, but it’s _cold_. Beau’s breath freezes in her body almost immediately, but she kicks towards one of the drifting oars with confident strokes and is able to grab it. She swims it back to the boat a little clumsily and heaves the oar back into the boat.

Jester’s gone.

Beau looks around the lake in a panic. Did Jester fall out or something? She’s just about to dive under the surface to check when Jester emerges from the water on the other side of the boat, holding the second oar.

“Got it,” Jester says cheerfully. She throws the oar into the boat, and then gets in after it.

Beau is stunned silent for a moment at the sight of her. She’s glistening wet, and her white underdress is soaked through, gone translucent enough for Beau to see her blue skin beneath it.

Jester leans down and pulls Beau into the boat as well.

“You’re a good swimmer, Beau,” Jester says.

“Th-thanks,” Beau says. Her teeth are chattering and her own underdress is soaked, but the sun feels _really_ nice. Jester seems to feel it too because she tilts her head up towards it, letting it warm her. Beau feels her breath catching in her chest. She almost leans forward and kisses that perfect mouth all over again.

The moment is broken, however, by Jester sneezing.

“We should get you warmed up,” Beau says. She takes the quilt off the floor of the boat and wraps it around Jester.

“You too, Beau,” Jester says, and she offers Beau half of the quilt so she can huddle next to her.

Beau shakes her head. “No, I’m fine, I should, uh, row us back to land. Uh, thanks.” And she makes herself sit down on the opposite side of the boat as Jester and row them back.

By the time they make it back to shore, the sun has dried them both out thoroughly enough for them to put their clothes back on, which is good, because Beau has not been able to stop blushing the entire time at the sight of all that blue skin, lit up in the sun. 

It doesn’t pass her notice that Jester keeps sneaking looks at _her_ too.

When they get back, Jester has Beau draw her a bath, which isn’t really a surprise, considering they both kind of stink of lake water. It _is_ a surprise when Jester tells her to bathe with her, instead of using the bathtub in the servants’ wing, like Beau usually does.

“There’s plenty of space,” Jester says. She makes a face. “Plus, no offense, but you really stink, Beau.”

“So do you,” Beau fires back, only because her gut is twisting with nerves all of a sudden.

Jester just shrugs and settles back in the bathwater with her eyes closed, her hair sticking to her face with the steam that’s rising off the water. The bath is tempting, and not just because Jester’s sitting in it, naked and flushed and lovelier than she has any right to be. The water in the servants’ wing is never hot, and Jester made Beau put all these soaps and salts into the water that makes it smell kind of nice. 

It’s the way Jester smells.

What the hell, why not. Beau sits on the edge of the bathtub and starts unlacing her dress. This is the second time she’s undressed in front of Jester today. She really shouldn’t start making a habit of it.

Jester gasps when Beau undresses completely.

“I _knew_ you weren’t a lady’s maid,” she says, staring at Beau with wide eyes.

“What? Oh, fuck,” Beau says. Her scars. She looks down at her torso, cranes her head to look at her back. Her scars are such a part of her that she’s stopped noticing them, but of course Jester would pick up on them. 

It’s not like there are that many of them, but they stand out visibly against her dark skin. They’re all mostly from her days in the Cobalt Soul — weapon’s training that went wrong, a knife that slid too close. Some of them are from earlier, though. When she was running with the wrong crowd in Kamordah and a kid stabbed her with a shiv as part of some stupid turf war. When her father threw a wine glass at her for talking back to him and it caught her in the shoulder.

Jester kneels up in the bath behind Beau and touches the puckered skin where the shattered pieces of the wineglass went in. Her fingers are gentle but Beau flinches away from them all the same. She puts her clothes back on, blood beating hot through her head.

Jester’s eyes are solemn. “It’s okay,” she says, soothing.

“I’m going to go take a bath in the servants’ wing,” Beau says, savagely, turning to the door. She’s _pissed_ , but she’s pissed at herself more than she is at Jester for discovering something she should have known to keep hidden. 

Beau forgot, after all this time, that she’s damaged goods. She fooled herself into thinking that she could actually be _good_ at something for once. She won’t make that mistake again.

“Beau, wait, please,” Jester says. She gets out of the water and wraps herself in a robe. “You can tell me. Whatever it is.”

“You don’t understand,” Beau says. 

“I _trust_ you,” Jester says, fiercely, as if that is the only thing that matters to her. “When will you trust me back?”

She needs Jester to back off. She needs to be left alone, so she can think about what to do next. But most of all, she needs Jester to stop _looking_ at her like that, like she’s _pitying her_.

“What’s the point in trusting you?” Beau says. She sneers, and sees Jester recoil at the look on her face. “There are things going on that don’t concern you. The real world is out there, outside these walls, and it’s not all pretty and nice like it is in your books — it’s fucked up, and it’s cruel. But you wouldn’t know that, would you?”

Jester doesn’t say anything. 

“I didn’t think so,” Beau says harshly, and she leaves. This time, Jester lets her.

It’s been three weeks since Beau arrived at the Gentleman’s estate. This is the last week Beau has here, and she has nothing to show so far.

She and Jester don’t speak. Beau brings Jester her meals and takes away her dirty dishes and clothes to be washed. Jester goes to her lessons alone, and then leaves to take long walks, spending practically the entire day outside. She doesn’t ask Beau to come with her.

Beau spends her time combing over every inch of the house that she can, peeking into cupboards, looking through bookshelves, eavesdropping on the other servants’ conversations. When she’s too tired to think, she goes back to her tiny room, and falls asleep listening to the wind whistling through the gaps in her small, dirty window.

She does catch a few of the Gentleman’s troupe talking about shipments and deliveries, money to be exchanged. Once she even catches the Gentleman himself talking to Ophelia Mardun about bribes to be given to Zadash’s trade council. 

She memorizes everything they say and writes it down in her notebook as soon as she can. It’s a start, but it’s not enough. If she really wants to finish this mission, she’s going to have to find a way into the Gentleman’s study.

Jester leaves her alone. Well, for the most part.

One morning, Beau wakes up to find Jester standing over her. Instead of her usual dress, Jester is wearing a coat, pants, and boots that go up to her knees. She looks so good that Beau forgets for a second that they’re not on friendly terms right now, and croaks, “You look nice.”

Jester puts her hands on her hips and frowns, and Beau sighs. Right.

“What can I help you with, miss,” Beau says stiffly.

“Get dressed, I need you to carry some things for me to the stables,” Jester says. “I’m going riding with Ophelia Mardun.” She twirls out of the room (only Jester could twirl like that and still keep her dignity), and Beau nearly falls out of the bed with how quickly she rushes to get dressed. Ophelia Mardun and Jester? She had no idea they were spending time together.

Beau bursts into Jester’s room. Jester points to a pile of heavy looking saddlebags. 

“All of these,” Jester says, sounding bored.

Beau grits her teeth. She picks up the saddlebags. They are heavy, but she doesn’t want Jester to know that, so she acts like it’s no big deal.

“What’s even in these?” Beau asks, unable to resist.

Jester’s eyes are sharp on her. “Why do you want to know?”

Jester is a fucking piece of work, isn’t she. Why couldn’t the Gentleman’s daughter be dull and well-mannered and utterly boring? It would have made Beau’s life a hell of a lot easier.

“You know what, never mind,” Beau says, adjusting the weight of the saddlebags. “These go to the stables, you said?”

“Yes,” Jester says tossing her head. She begins to walk down the hallways to the main entrance, and Beau follows. “Ophelia will take me riding and then we’ll eat a picnic and then, I don’t know, talk about really important and interesting stuff.” 

“That’s great,” Beau says, with as much sarcasm as she dares.

“Isn’t it?” Jester says, there’s just a few too many teeth in that smile — if sweetness could kill, Jester would have murdered Beau a hundred times over by now.

By the time they make it to the stables, Beau is sweating a little with the strain and her arms are trembling. She could ask Jester for a break, but she’s too stubborn. When they finally make it there, she unloads the bags with a loud grunt, and massages her shoulders.

She thinks she sees Jester looking at her, but when she turns around, Jester is busy hitching a saddle onto her horse.

“You could have said it was too heavy,” Jester says quietly.

“It’s fine, _miss_ ,” Beau says, a little vindictively, and sees Jester wince.

“I _told_ you to call me—” Jester stops, bites at her lip furiously. She looks like she’s about to say something else, and then Ophelia Mardun walks in. She’s wearing a badass coat again and she has — holy shit — a riding crop in her hands. She comes over to Jester and brushes her lips across her cheek in greeting, and Beau hates Ophelia with every fiber of her being in that one, sharp moment.

She doesn’t realize she’s glaring until Ophelia looks over at her with piercing eyes. “And who’s this?” she asks.

“No one. Just my lady’s maid,” Jester says quickly, and normally Beau would bristle at those words, but she catches sight of the look on Jester’s face.

Jester looks _scared_.

Jester’s words work. Ophelia’s attention slides off of Beau like she doesn’t even see her anymore. “Are you ready, my dear?” she says to Jester. “I want to reach there by noon.”

“Yes. Beau, can you help me put these bags on my horse?” Jester says.

Beau nods and lifts them up for her, and Jester secures them onto her horse's saddle. As she’s doing so, one of the flaps of the bags fall open and Beau catches sight of what’s inside. Food and painting supplies — the exact same things Jester and Beau took up with them to the mountain. 

Jester closes the flap of the bag. She doesn’t look at Beau.

“Help me onto my horse,” Jester tells her, and there’s none of her usual imperiousness. Instead, she sounds nervous. 

Suddenly, Beau wishes there was some way for her to come along with Jester, so that she could protect Jester from whatever it is she’s dreading. But instead Beau kneels and holds out her hands. Jester steps into them, her hand curled tightly on Beau’s shoulder, and Beau lifts her up into the saddle.

She tries to smile at Jester to comfort her, but Jester isn’t paying attention to her. She looks behind her to Ophelia, who has mounted up on her own horse.

“Let’s go,” Jester says.

Beau watches helplessly as Ophelia and Jester ride away.

Beau goes back to the house. Jester comes back late that night, and Beau doesn’t see her. And then when she wakes up, she finds that Jester is out already, her bed slept in. She must have gotten something to eat herself. Beau makes the bed, and ignores the hollow feeling in her chest.

Since there’s nothing else to do, she does another round of the house, trying to see if she can catch any other pieces of useful information. It’s not long before Beau realizes she’s being followed.

She looks behind her to find Cree walking behind her in the hallway, not bothering to be stealthy about it. When Cree sees that Beau has noticed her, she begins to walk faster.

She has a knife in her hand.

Beau reacts instinctively when Cree lunges at her. She moves fast around the strike, stepping into Cree’s defenses and striking her arm so that the knife falls out of her grasp, landing a few paces away.

Cree stares at her with evident surprise. “You’re no lady’s maid,” she says. “You fight like a monk. Who sent you?” She grabs at Beau but Beau knocks away her arm again, stepping back so that she has room to fight.

“What, you’re gonna kill me now? Is that it?” Beau asks.

Cree frowns. “I need your blood. Every member of the house staff must submit a vial of their blood for security reasons. But you aren’t just any maid, are you?”

This time when Cree strikes, she’s not holding back. She fights with surprising viciousness for someone who seems to have so much control otherwise. Beau dodges Cree’s first three strikes, but then her claws catch her on the arm, tearing open the sleeve of her dress and leaving behind deep, bloody gouges. Beau feels suddenly lightheaded as she sees ribbons of her flesh on Cree’s claws.

Cree must see the look on Beau’s face, because she grins. “Look, don’t make this harder than it has to be, girlie. If you tell everything to the Gentleman, I’m sure he’ll cut a deal with you. He’s generous like that.”

“Go to hell,” Beau snarls, and punches her.

This time she gets Cree right in the ribs. She feels something crack, and Cree grunts in pain.

It’s a hard fight — they’re evenly matched, and the hallway is narrow enough that there isn’t very much room to maneuver. At some point, Cree smashes Beau into a side table with some expensive looking vase on it, and then there’s broken pottery everywhere. Beau gets Cree back for that by kicking her in the jaw and dislocating it, so at least she can’t speak to her anymore.

All in all, Beau’s actually kind of enjoying herself. That is, until Cree picks up her knife again.

Beau’s not fast enough this time. Cree backs her up against the wall and sinks the blade between her ribs, twisting it. Beau looks down at the knife with disbelief, as if it is happening to someone else, except she can _feel_ every nerve screaming in pain. With an almost practiced calm, Cree reaches into the pouch by her side and takes out a glass vial. She’s going to take Beau’s blood.

Beau calls upon the last dregs of adrenaline she still has left. She knocks the vial out of Cree’s hand and it shatters against the wall. Then she strikes Cree in the back of the neck. It’s as if, for a moment, Dairon’s hands are guiding hers. She knows exactly where to go.

Cree falls over unconscious.

Beau collapses back against the wall with a whimper. The red stain on the front of her dress is growing. Dimly, she knows that if she doesn’t get help soon, she will bleed out and die, and that will be that. A death that barely even meant anything.

She limps her way back to Jester’s room, hand clutching the knife still lodged in her. 

But when she gets there, she finds that Jester is still not back in her rooms. Beau tries to think what to do, but it turns out her body makes that decision for her. Her legs give out, and she falls onto the rug.

That is how Jester finds her.

Beau wakes up out of her daze to the sound of Jester’s shriek. There’s a clatter, as if Jester dropped whatever it was she was holding, and then she’s kneeling beside Beau on the rug. 

“Beau, what happened?” Jester says. She turns Beau over onto her back, and Beau groans as pain shoots through her.

“I got fucking stabbed,” Beau says.

“Well, I can _see that_ ,” Jester says. “You know you have the knife still sticking out of you, right?”

Beau thinks this is a bad time for Jester to get snippy with her, but somehow coming up with an equally snippy reply is helping to take the edge off the pain. “Really, do I?” she says, ruining it by wheezing a little. “I hadn’t noticed.”

Jester gets up for a brief moment and then comes back with a pair of scissors. She cuts open the front of Beau’s dress, exposing the knife wound. “Hold on,” Jester says.

This seems nonspecific. “Hold on to what? Oh — _FUCK_.” Beau grabs Jester’s hand, and then Jester’s other hand _yanks out the knife_.

“I was saving that for later,” Beau says, coughing. There’s blood in her mouth, and also she can’t get a full breath into her lungs for some reason. Was the ceiling of this room always so high? She’s still holding onto Jester’s hand. It’s very important that she doesn’t let it go. Jester told her to hold on, after all.

“Well, I’ll keep it here for you, I guess,” Jester says. She wrinkles her nose and sets the knife aside.

“Hey, Jes,” Beau says. “I’m not really a lady’s maid. You were right. You’re always right, actually. I’m sorry about what I said. I’m really sorry, okay?” Fuck, but she’s crying. She didn’t want to die like this, gross and crying and wearing a stupid apron.

Jester just looks at her. “No one’s ever called me Jes before,” she says, her voice gone small. Then she puts her hand over Beau’s bleeding wound and says words over it that seem to echo and magnify strangely in Beau’s head, sending ribbons of warmth across her. Beau moves her head weakly to look down at what the hell Jester’s doing, and realizes that Jester is _healing her_.

“You’re a cleric,” Beau breathes. She looks up at Jester, her blue face framed with a glowing light, her hair moving in an invisible breeze, a strange power coursing through her. Either Jester’s a cleric, or she’s god herself.

Standing behind her, just for a second, Beau sees a figure in a green cloak. It’s gone when she blinks again.

“I’m a cleric,” Jester says, and smiles at her like she smiled at Beau that first morning after Beau had woken up in her bed. It turns out Beau’s just in love with her now as she had been then, maybe even more so.

The wound seals. Beau collapses back against the rug, too tired to do anything else.

“Who’s your god then?” Beau asks her, dazed.

Jester tuts at her. “No way, not happening. You’re answering my questions first, okay?”

Beau smiles. Her eyes are closing, and she can’t keep them open no matter how hard she tries. “Yeah, I guess that’s fair.”

She passes out.

Beau comes to with her head pillowed in Jester’s lap. Jester is idly touching her scratches and bruises one by one, healing them with little zings of magic. 

It’s such a nice feeling that Beau decides to keep her eyes closed for a minute more.

“I know you’re awake,” Jester says, sounding amused.

“Oh.” Beau opens her eyes guiltily.

“Are you going to tell me what happened now?” Jester asks.

“Yeah,” Beau says. Jester’s hand brushes through her hair to heal a bump on her head and it briefly distracts her.

“So then what are you waiting for?” Jester asks, and Beau has to smile a little at how impatient she sounds.

“Well, I don’t know where to begin,” Beau tells her. “Also, I’m realizing that Cree is probably going to come looking for me as soon as she wakes up.”

From Beau’s vantage point on Jester’s lap, she sees Jester’s eyebrows raise. “Cree stabbed you? Why?” Jester asks.

Beau takes a deep breath. “Because she figured out I was a monk. And I guess if I’m telling you everything, I should say I was sent by the Cobalt Soul in Zadash to gather intel on your dad.” She says this in a rush, and then braces herself for Jester’s reaction.

“Oh, cool,” Jester says, seemingly thrilled by this. “That’s _way_ more badass than what I thought.”

“Really? ‘Cool’?” Beau says skeptically. “I just told you I’m here spying against your father.”

Jester shrugs. “That just means he’s super important that they sent a spy from the Cobalt Soul to find out what he’s doing, right? It’s not like you were going to _kill_ him or anything. I do know that about the Cobalt Soul.”

Beau has no idea what to make of this. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Anyway,” Jester says, poking Beau gently on the forehead, “you have to tell me why you were sent here. Start from the beginning, and don’t leave anything out, okay? I saved your life after all. And if Cree comes looking for you, I won’t let her get to you. You’re under my protection now.”

It is the easy way that Jester says it that catches Beau between the ribs quicker than any knife. 

So Beau starts from the beginning. She tells Jester about being given to the monks as a child after her father slapped her across the face and told her to go make something of herself that wasn’t a disgrace. She tells Jester about Dairon, about someone who finally saw some kind of worth in her. She tells Jester about being given the mission to investigate the Myriad.

Jester is quiet after Beau finishes. 

“Will you — please say something,” Beau says, her voice cracking. Jester has her head bowed, her hair shadowing her face. “Tell me what you’re thinking. I never know what you’re thinking, so you have to tell me.”

“Beau, did you only make friends with me because you wanted to spy on my dad?” Jester says, and Beau immediately sits up, frightened of the hurt in Jester’s voice. Jester looks at her, something distant in the way she holds herself, as if she’s scared of what Beau will say.

Beau knows she’s a fuck-up. She lashes out when she should listen; she runs when she should dig her heels in and hold fast. But this, with Jester — it’s too important for her to fuck it up. Beau leans forward, ignoring the shredded, bloody remnants of her dress and hugs Jester.

“This is going to sound really sad, and pathetic, and you can laugh at me if you want,” Beau says. “You’re my first friend, Jes. My first real friend, at least. And I know that’s fucked up, because I was lying to you this entire time, and you probably don’t want to have a friend who would do that, but you _see me_ , and it kind of sucks. I mean, it sucks because you saw through my cover within a week but it also sucks because I’m not really the kind of person who holds up under scrutiny like that, you know?” Beau laughs, and it’s a little watery, and not very nice sounding.

Jester hugs her back, and even though it pulls a little at Beau’s bruised ribs, she doesn’t _care_. She’s so relieved. She’s so relieved that Jester doesn’t despise her, that she believes her.

“You’re my first friend too, Beau,” Jester says. 

“Oh,” Beau says, sniffling loudly. There’s snot, like, everywhere right now. She pulls away and wipes her nose with a ragged sleeve. “Shit, I’m so disgusting right now.”

“Yeah, I didn’t want to say anything, but you are _covered_ in blood right now, and your dress is, um.” Jester looks down significantly. Beau follows her gaze. Wow, her dress is _open_ open. Tits out and everything. Beau pulls the tattered shreds together over her chest for politeness’ sake, even though it doesn’t really help much.

“Sorry about that,” Jester says, although Beau notices she takes her time looking back up.

“I mean, you did heal my mortal wound and all that. But I think I’m, uh, going to go change now.” Beau gets to her feet, expecting to feel twinges of pain, but the knife wound doesn’t give her any trouble, and even her sore ribs are starting to feel better and better by the second. Clerics, man.

“I’ll get your clothes from your room. I don’t want you to go out there alone,” Jester says, and hurries out of the room.

Beau cleans her face off as best as she can, and shucks off her ruined dress. It’s probably going to have to be burned. Not for the first time, she wishes desperately for her monk clothes.

“Beau,” Jester says, standing in the doorway. She’s holding Beau’s clothes, and they slip to the floor. Her expression is stricken.

Beau freezes in horror. “What is it? What’s wrong?” She holds her arms out instinctively, not even thinking about it, and to her amazement, Jester comes running into them.

“Holy shit, Beau, you almost _died_ ,” Jester says, and then she’s kissing Beau.

Beau makes a muffled noise of surprise and leans back against the wall. She’s still not wearing any _clothes_ , and Jester is clinging to her like she’s afraid to let her go, her mouth moving hot against Beau’s.

They pull away to breathe, to stare with wide eyes at each other. Beau wants to kiss her again, wants to tip Jester’s head up and show her how to put those sharp teeth of hers to good use, but instead Jester grabs her arm and makes a ragged, angry noise. There are still bloody claw marks across Beau’s right shoulder, remnants of the fight that didn’t get fully healed. Jester lays a hand over them, heavy enough that Beau feels the healing magic go through her bones. 

For a second, it hurts, and then Beau’s brain does that thing where it turns pain into pleasure, probably because it’s _Jester_ , and she’s standing close enough that the front of her dress keeps brushing against Beau’s bare chest, and — it’s just a lot right now. 

Beau leans her head back against the wall and tries to get a hold of herself. “I’m okay, Jester, really,” Beau says with a gasp. “You made sure of that. I don’t usually have someone watching my back.”

“I hate that you got hurt,” Jester says. “I hate it. She’s not _allowed_.”

“I mean, I hurt her back too,” Beau says, a little defensively. “She’s probably not recovering from that broken rib too quick. She doesn’t have you to look after her.”

“That’s right. She doesn’t,” Jester says, darkly. She turns Beau around almost aggressively to check her over for further injuries, and finds more gouges across Beau’s back where Cree dug her claws in. Jester makes a tight, furious noise and says the words to the healing spell in such a threatening voice that this time Beau can’t stop making a mortifying noise when her flesh knits itself together under Jester’s touch.

A small part of her almost wishes she were _more_ injured so that Jester could keep touching her like that, like she’s trying to mark Beau as _hers_ instead.

“Jester,” Beau says, a part of her dying a little at the needy whine in her voice. She turns around and is grateful to see that Jester immediately flicks her eyes down to stare at her mouth hungrily.

They kiss again, Jester immediately licking into Beau’s mouth just like Beau was hoping she would. 

“Is it good like this?” Jester asks her, pausing to catch her breath.

“Yeah. You can — you can kiss my neck too,” Beau tells her, and she doesn’t even care how desperate she sounds, because Jester just smiles and does exactly that, presses hot, wet kisses all along Beau’s throat, her arms winding their way around Beau’s waist. Jester’s teeth graze a little across the sensitive skin below Beau’s jaw and Beau’s spine arches involuntarily.

“Fuck,” Beau says, thoughts shattering into a million pieces.

“Oh, can we?” Jester says breathlessly. “I want to.”

It takes Beau’s mind a long moment to catch up with this, and then she’s swallowing heavily. “Wait. Hold on. Shit, we can’t just — I still need to figure out what I’m going to _do_ after this. I have to _leave_.”

“What are you talking about?” Jester says. “Don’t you have to finish your mission?”

“Yeah, but I can’t do that if I have a fucking blood hunter after me who knows I’m a monk in disguise. Cree’s probably already told your dad everything. I have to get back to Zadash before she really tries to kill me.”

“No,” Jester says sharply, and Beau’s breath leaves her body. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to help you finish your mission and then we’re both going to Zadash. Together.”

“I did tell you that my mission was to spy on your dad, right?” Beau says, confused. “Why would you help me with that?”

“I think it would be funny,” Jester says with a grin. 

“No, really, Jes,” Beau says, firmly. “What about Ophelia. Don’t you, I don’t know, like her?”

The smile slips just a little off Jester’s face. “I don’t want to live here for the rest of my life, Beau,” she says. “Ophelia is… I don’t really like her very much. I want to go with _you_.”

“So you’d betray your dad?” Beau says, ignoring the warm feeling that blooms through her when Jester says that. “Look, I’m just trying to make sense of this. Why not just ask him if you can leave?”

“‘Betray’ is such a _serious_ word. This is more like a good prank,” Jester tells her. “And anyway, if I ask him to leave it’s never — it won’t be just _me_ who leaves. He’s always going to make sure there are people watching me to make sure I’m safe. I _know_ it’s because he loves me but I want to do this on my own terms. I don’t want to leave only if it’s good for him. If I’m going to leave, I’m going to leave _all_ the way, not just halfway.”

Jester smiles again, mischief in her eyes. “And besides, this would be the perfect gesture of that, don’t you think? I know how Papa is. He’ll know what this means. He raised me, after all.”

Beau nods. She still doesn’t understand all the way, but she does know what it’s like to feel stifled in a home you don’t belong to. If Jester wants to leave, then she should leave.

“If you’re sure, then I’m with you,” Beau says. “What’s the plan?”

“Well, I guess you should get dressed first,” Jester says, with great reluctance. “And then I can show you where Papa keeps his notes.”

A thought then occurs to Beau, a chill going up her spine. “Wait, Jes. You don’t think — your dad doesn’t keep vials of _your_ blood, does he?”

Jester considers this. “You know what? I have no idea.”

“Would you be okay with it if he did?” Beau asks.

Jester just looks at her. “No. I don’t think I would be.”

Jester is true to her word. After Beau is dressed, she takes her to the Gentleman’s study.

“Won’t he be in there?” Beau says.

“He usually meets with the groundskeeper around this time,” Jester tells her. “He’s going to be back later. Papa always keeps to his schedule.”

“And Ophelia? Cree?” Beau says. “What if they show up?”

“I’ll keep watch,” Jester says. “But you have to be quick, okay?”

She leads Beau to the door. “Hold on, there’s a spell on the lock. I think I can—” Jester wrinkles her brow in concentration, and then makes a hand gesture that’s a little too quick for Beau to follow. Beau feels her ears pop, as if a strange pressure was lifted.

“There, I dispelled it,” Jester says. “You can pick the lock now without getting blown up.”

“Fuck, Jes, you’re amazing,” Beau says, and can’t help but press a quick kiss to Jester’s cheek. Then she gets out her lockpick set and gets to work. The lock itself isn’t too complicated, and she has it open relatively easily.

“Look in the drawer on the right side of the desk. Traveler be with you,” Jester says, and before Beau can ask her who the Traveler is, she pushes Beau into the room. The door closes behind her.

Beau looks around. The room itself isn’t too big. There are bookshelves with a surprising amount of well-worm books among the collection — clearly the Gentleman likes to read. 

There’s an unlit fireplace, and the mantle is all cracked marble and peeling paint. It’s like the rest of this house, just toeing the line between looking distinguished and absolutely ruined. There are old letters and strange collected artifacts lining it and Beau’s fingers are practically itching with how badly she wants to go through them.

But she has to focus. Beau turns to the desk, which isn’t as impressive as the mantlepiece, but still interesting. A quick glance tells her that the books and papers on top are just normal ledgers of day-to-day expenses from the house, nothing related to the Myriad.

She tries the drawer on the right side. It’s locked.

This one is harder to pick than the lock on the door, but Beau still manages it after a few close calls. It’s only after she hears the click that she remembers the very real possibility that the drawer might be trapped as well. Beau holds her breath, but nothing happens. She very gingerly opens the drawer.

There are only two things in it: a leatherbound notebook and a small black key. The notebook is overflowing with loose pieces of paper that have been stuck between the pages. Jackpot. She quickly scans the last written pages. It’s detailed notes on plans made with the Mardun family — names, locations, dates. Everything she needs. Beau pulls out her own notebook and begins to copy everything down as quickly as she can.

One line in particular stops her. She reads it once, then three more times. She resists the urge to tear the notebook in half.

Instead, Beau makes herself put the notebook back just as she found it. She picks up the key from the drawer, and does a quick look around the room to see what it might open. Beau spots a small black cabinet in the corner that looks like it’s of a similar style to the key. When she tries the lock, it opens.

Its shelves are lined with vials of blood.

They are all carefully labelled with the owners’ names and arranged alphabetically, and so Beau finds Jester’s vial very easily: Lavorre, Jester. Her hands shake as she takes the vial and pockets it.

“Finally,” Jester says, when Beau leaves the room. “Did you get what you needed?”

First, Beau hands Jester the vial of blood. She sees Jester read the name on the label, and then hunch her shoulders like she’s trying to draw herself smaller.

“Did he have one for my mother, too?” she asks.

Beau shakes her head. “I didn’t see it.”

Jester nods. She puts the vial of blood into her pocket.

“And there’s one more thing,” Beau says, taking a deep breath. “He was planning to have you marry Ophelia Mardun. Looks like you were going to leave this place after all.” 

Her weak joke falls flat though, when she sees the look on Jester’s face.

“I have to go talk to him,” Jester says, very slowly, as if she is realizing it as she says it.

“Now?” Beau says. “I thought you were just going to leave a note, and then leave. We’re still leaving, right?”

“We’ll leave,” Jester says. She turns away, but not before Beau sees the determined look on her face. “But first I’m going to talk to him.”

They find the Gentleman on his way back from the estate’s borders. It’s windy — the trees keep making noise like crashing waves, and the meadow grass is bent over into a smooth silvery sheet beneath the force of it. The sun is setting too, so it all looks a little dramatic and dreamlike, and Beau sets it in her mind so that she can tell Dairon exactly how it happened.

Except, she realizes, she probably won’t get the chance to. Dairon’s probably going to punch her in the face once she starts telling them about her mission.

Beau watches Jester approach the Gentleman. She stays back a little, not wanting to call attention to herself, but also within hearing distance because she’s nosy as hell.

“Papa, I’m going to Zadash,” Jester says. She takes out the vial of blood.

Beau sees the Gentleman’s face when he realizes what it is, where it must have come from. “How did you—” he says.

Jester drops the vial to the ground and smashes it under the heel of her boot. The Gentleman doesn’t try to stop her.

“I’m not going to turn into Mama,” Jester tells him. “I’m going to go out and see the world. I’ll see her too. But I’m not coming back here. I thought you should know that.”

“I built all of this for you,” the Gentleman says, his voice tight. He gestures to the house, to the grounds. 

“I know,” Jester says, and her voice goes soft and choked. She seems to gather her strength, though. “I just never wanted it, Papa.”

For the first time, Beau sees the loneliness in him come to the surface. “You’re all I have,” the Gentleman says.

Jester doesn’t say anything for a long time. Then, quietly, “You were never meant to keep me forever, Papa.”

Beau looks away, then. She doesn’t see if they hug, or if the Gentleman looks just as broken as he sounds. When she looks up, he’s gone, and Jester is wading through the grass back towards her.

Jester goes into her arms again. Beau tucks her chin over the top of Jester’s head and holds her close. She can feel Jester shaking as she cries.

“Did I do the right thing?” Jester says, muffled. “Tell me I did the right thing.”

“You did the right thing,” Beau says. “I’m proud of you.”

She takes Jester’s hand in hers, brings it up to her lips, and presses her lips to her knuckles. Jester watches her do this solemnly, her eyes wet, her grip tightening on Beau’s hand.

“I made you a promise before,” Beau says. “I promised you I wouldn’t leave you. And when I made that promise, I didn’t know if I’d be able to keep it. I’ve never really been the kind of person who keeps their promises.” She laughs a little, unable to help it, so sick with herself, the person she used to be. “I’m going to do everything I can to keep this one, though.”

Jester looks down at their joined hands. She smiles. “It seems like such a small thing, just to leave. But I never was brave enough to do it by myself. Thank you, Beau.”

“You were always brave enough, Jes,” Beau says fiercely. “But now you don’t have to do it alone. Let’s get out of here, okay?”

“Okay,” Jester says.

Hand in hand, they leave the Gentleman’s estate.

They walk to the nearest town to catch a stagecoach that takes them to Zadash. Beau is so tired she falls asleep, wakes up later with her head on Jester’s shoulder, their hands still joined.

Beau’s never been this happy. She feels like she’s been searching for this her entire life — this easy joy, this simple peace. She presses a gentle kiss to Jester’s shoulder and Jester makes a soft, sleepy noise.

When they reach Zadash, it’s about an hour past midnight. Beau finds an inn that she remembers being at least halfway decent, and they get a room for the night. It’s nothing too fancy, but it’s clean, and the sheets on the bed smell like they were washed recently. 

They collapse into the bed immediately, too tired to even undress. Jester’s tail wraps around Beau’s ankle again as they sleep. It’s early afternoon by the time they wake up.

“I have to go see Dairon,” Beau says. “You can stay here if you want.”

“Do you want me to stay here?” Jester asks her.

Beau doesn’t even have to think about it. “Not really.”

Jester smiles. “Then I’ll come with you.”

Beau is nervous as they make their way to the Cobalt Soul, but she’s glad she brought Jester, if only to hear her delight as they walk through the Pentamarket. Jester wants to stop to peek into every shop, making cheerful conversation with every shopkeeper as they show her their wares. It’s kind of nice to see Jester in her element — cheerful and free and instantly charming every person she meets.

By the time they reach the Cobalt Soul it’s already turning into early evening, but Beau feels so much lighter and calmer that she doesn’t really mind. 

“Are you ready now?” Jester asks her, as they step into the Cobalt Soul temple.

“Wait, did you do that on purpose?” Beau asks her.

“Do what on purpose?” Jester says, and it’s _much_ too innocent. Beau pushes her and Jester laughs.

Beau is still smiling a little when she sees Dairon.

They’re in the main hall, talking to one of the archivists. When they see Beau walk in, there’s just the smallest smile of recognition. They begin to walk towards Beau and then see Jester standing behind her. Beau can tell that Dairon recognizes Jester, because their expression goes stony all at once. Fuck.

“Hello Beauregard,” Dairon says coolly. They turn to Jester, and bow their head. “And you must be Jester Lavorre. How wonderful to see you here in Zadash.”

“It’s so wonderful to be here.” Jester says brightly. “I’ve heard _so_ much about you, and by the way, you look _way_ less scary than I thought you looked.” 

Beau can see Dairon taken aback a little by Jester’s smile. “Thank you,” they say uncertainly, and then turn to Beau. Beau is kind of an expert in telling when Dairon is mad at her, and she can tell that, right now, Dairon is _furious_. “If I could talk to you in private, Beauregard?”

“Sure,” Beau says, even though that’s kind of the last thing she wants to do right now. 

They go into Dairon’s study while Jester waits on the bench outside. She gives Beau an encouraging smile and a thumb’s up before the door swings shut.

“Can I ask,” Dairon says, as soon as they’re alone, “what possessed you to bring the Gentleman’s daughter here?”

Beau hesitates. There’s a part of her that knows it’s a bad idea to tell Dairon the full truth — that she’s in love with Jester. Dairon is always telling her not to make emotional attachments, that it’s only a way to cloud her judgment. There’s no way they would approve of how Beau feels about Jester.

Beau shrugs. “Jester and I came to a mutually beneficial partnership, that’s all. She didn’t want to stay with the Gentleman anymore, and she helped me get the information I need. You’re welcome by the way.” She tosses her notebook to Dairon, who catches it with a glare. They read through it quickly, their eyebrows raising as they do so.

“This is impressive,” Dairon says, and Beau relaxes just a little bit.

“Yeah, I know,” Beau says.

But she’s not off the hook yet. “So you did manage to learn of the Gentleman’s plans. Why don’t you start from the beginning,” Dairon says, and crosses their arms.

Beau recounts her last few weeks, making sure to skip over all the parts with Jester. She focuses on telling Dairon about her impressions of the Gentleman, of Ophelia Mardun, on what she found in the Gentleman’s study. Dairon pinches their nose when Beau tells them about her fight with Cree.

“You should not have fought back,” Dairon tells her. “You blew your cover.”

“She was going to _take my blood_ ,” Beau argues. “I was just supposed to let her?”

“Yes,” Dairon says, eyes flashing. “You punch without thinking. You’re still undisciplined.”

“I completed my mission,” Beau says, hands clenching into fists. Fuck, she’s _not_ going to start crying. 

“You were sloppy,” Dairon says.

“You said you would make me Expositor when I came back. You promised. Was that just a way to get me to do it, or did you actually mean it?” Beau says. As she says it, Beau realizes that she doesn’t even _want_ it anymore. She doesn’t want to be an Expositor, not if it means _this_. Something changed in her during these last few weeks — she doesn’t want to just impress Dairon anymore.

There’s an entire world she wants to see. And she wants to bring Jester with her.

As she is realizing this, Dairon looks thoughtful. “So you say you and the Lavorre girl are just happenstance allies? Nothing more?”

“Yeah,” Beau says.

Dairon nods. “I suppose it might work to our advantage to have the Gentleman’s daughter in our ranks. More so, if she’s as powerful a cleric as you say.”

Beau shakes her head angrily. “Absolutely not. Jester was going to be used by the Gentleman for his own ends, I’m not going to let the same thing happen to her here.”

Then she sees the look on Dairon’s face, like they’re looking right through her, and Beau realizes that Dairon fucking _baited_ her, to get her to reveal her feelings.

Beau makes a frustrated noise and crosses her arms. “You know I hate it when you do that,” she says.

“Learn to control your emotions better and I won’t be able to manipulate them as easily,” Dairon says absently, like it’s a lesson they’ve grown tired of trying to teach her.

“Okay, so I care about Jester. What’s wrong with that?” Beau asks.

Dairon raises their eyebrows. “Well, other than the fact that you’ve potentially made a very dangerous enemy? That you’ve allied yourself with the daughter of the most dangerous man in Zadash?”

“Yeah, but _she’s_ not dangerous. She’s _Jester_ ,” Beau says. “She’s, like, basically sunshine and pastries distilled into a person. Right before we came here, I saw her throw a jam tart into the gutter because she saw a rat in it and she thought it looked hungry.” And then Jester had made Beau buy her another jam tart.

Dairon sighs. “Then what will you do? You must realize that we can’t protect both of you. If the Gentleman or his allies come after you because of her then I can’t do anything.” They pause. “I do care about what happens to you, Beauregard. I don’t want to see you throw your potential away.”

There would have been a time when Beau would have done anything to hear Dairon say those words. Before she can second guess herself, she steps forward and hugs Dairon, feeling them stiffen against her.

“Thanks Dairon, for everything,” Beau says, pulling away. “I think I have to make my own way now though.”

Dairon seems to study Beau’s face for a long moment. Whatever it is they see in her, they nod. “You’ve grown,” they say.

“I’ve been eating a lot of pastries lately,” Beau jokes.

Jester looks up when she leaves Dairon’s office.

“Did it go well?” Jester asks.

“Yeah, you know what, it actually kind of did,” Beau says. “Come on, I’m going to go get my things, and then we’ll head back.”

Beau changes out of her disguise. It’s good to finally wear monk clothes again, even if she’s technically leaving the Cobalt Soul. She feels like herself in a way she hasn’t in a while. 

Jester sucks in a breath when she sees Beau. “Holy shit, Beau. Your abs look real good in that crop top.”

Beau grins, and tries not to flex her muscles. “You think so?”

Jester looks up from checking her out. “I think we should go back to the inn right now.”

Beau blinks. “Uh, sure. Everything okay?”

“Yeah, of course, Beau,” Jester says, but she sounds strange as she says it.

Jester’s in a rush on the way back, and Beau has to quicken her stride to keep up with her. Jester doesn’t even stop to look at any of the stalls. It’s getting dark now, and there’s all kinds of food stalls open for the dinner rush, the smell of bread and frying meat in the air. But Jester ignores these, and makes a beeline for the inn instead. 

They go up to their room, and Beau immediately flops onto the bed. What a day.

“Help me take off my clothes, Beau,” Jester says, standing over her.

Beau looks at her sideways. “You know I’m not pretending to be your lady’s maid anymore, right? You can’t just tell me what to do when you feel like it.”

“I know that,” Jester says. “But you’re going to undress me anyway.” And she looks significantly at the bed, there waiting for them.

“Oh. Right. Yeah.” Beau gets up and begins undoing the laces of Jester’s dress, ignoring Jester’s incredibly smug smile. It’s a good thing Beau has so much practice with Jester’s dresses at this point, because she can barely concentrate, she’s so fucking psyched at the prospect of finally getting to touch Jester the way she’s wanted to touch her for _weeks_.

“So this is why you were in a rush,” Beau says, figuring it out.

“Well, of course,” Jester says, like it should have been obvious.

Jester steps out of her dress, and then drags Beau to the bed. Beau gladly follows.

She immediately settles between Jester’s legs. Her thoughts have gone to a pleasant quiet buzz. The only thing that matters now is touching Jester everywhere she can, with her hands, with her mouth. Jester’s beautiful breasts and their dusky almost-violet nipples that Beau draws into her mouth, the freckles across Jester’s shoulders and collarbones, the soft, lovely fat of her thighs that Beau kisses, bites once, gently.

All the while, Jester sighs with contentment, not bothering to hide her reactions. That honesty is something new for Beau. Everything about Jester is new, and each discovery takes Beau by surprise. 

Beau’s never done this before. Usually when she’s slept with people, it’s always been a furtive, rushed thing. Two bodies trying to get each other off as quickly as possible. In her brief relationship with Tori, she can’t remember any time when they’d just spent an entire evening touching each other, learning each other.

When she finally gets her mouth between Jester’s legs, Jester lets out a startled cry, her thighs briefly tightening around Beau’s head. 

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Beau,” Jester says, sitting up. “Did I hurt you? I wasn’t expecting you to—” Her eyes darken looking at Beau’s face, at the slick gathered around Beau’s mouth. Beau takes her time licking her lips, smirking at Jester’s small gasp.

“You’re fine, Jes,” Beau says, kissing Jester’s belly. “Just try to relax, okay?”

“ _You_ try to relax,” Jester huffs, but she lays back down across the sheets again, and Beau smiles and bends her head once more. She takes her time, wanting Jester to feel as good as possible, wanting this to be as perfect as she can make it. Beau takes note of every involuntary twitch and sigh, every time a shiver goes through Jester. 

Near the end, Jester begins to take long, heaving breaths, her hands twisting in the sheets. Beau feels it when Jester goes taut all at once. Beau works her through it, keeps her mouth there, just _there_ , until Jester lets out a long, satisfied breath.

Beau wipes her mouth off with the back of her hand. “How was that?” she asks.

Jester just nods weakly, which Beau takes to mean that she did a pretty good job.

Fuck, the way Jester looks right now is indescribable. Beau cups Jester’s cheek, runs a hand through her hair, finds the spot just at the root of her horns that makes Jester shiver and lean in, kissing Beau. 

It’s a little sloppy, a little guileless in its honest hunger — exactly the way Jester is, in other words. Beau slides over next to Jester so that they can keep kissing.

“I like looking at you, Beau,” Jester says.

Oh. “I like looking at you too, Jes,” Beau says.

Jester rolls over onto her belly and props her chin up in her hand. “You know what I think we should do? Since you’re such a good teacher and you’ve been teaching me so well?”

Beau’s mouth is suddenly dry. “What?”

“Well, you should show me how you like to be touched. I can watch _you_ do it, and then I’ll learn from that.”

Beau realizes what Jester means and then immediately feels like she’s been struck with a brick. “Oh, fuck, Jes.”

“So that sounds good then?” Jester says cheerfully, like she already kind of knows the answer, and is just waiting for Beau to catch up with her. Beau doesn’t know how Jester always manages to be three steps ahead of her, but it’s not like she _minds_ in this very specific circumstance.

“Yes,” she says, as fervently as she can.

“Then here, I’ll help you get started,” Jester says, and takes off the rest of Beau’s clothes.

“Oh, so you meant right now,” Beau says, just to see Jester frown at her. If Jester were standing up, she’d be stamping her foot, Beau just knows it.

“Yes of course I meant right now,” Jester says impatiently. “Why, did you have something else going on that you needed to take care of?”

“No, I think everything I need to take care of is right here actually,” Beau says with a smirk. She lets her legs fall open.

“You are _so_ embarrassing sometimes,” Jester says under her breath, but Beau notices that she looks Beau up and down with interest all the same.

“Well?” Jester says.

“Watch and learn,” Beau says, and reaches one hand between her legs.

Jester doesn’t look away as Beau rubs at her clit, fingers herself just the way she would if she were trying to get off by herself. 

It’s different now. Having Jester’s eyes on her makes it different. And then pretty soon it’s not just Jester’s eyes — she’s using her hands too, to pet up Beau’s legs, her side. Jester rests a hand against Beau’s abs for a second as if to feel the flex of them as Beau gets closer and closer to the edge. 

“I thought the point was to watch,” Beau says, panting. “You just wanted to see me fall apart, didn’t you?”

“I mean can you blame me? Like you’re kind of sweaty and glistening, and your muscles look so good, wow. You’re beautiful like this,” Jester says, hushed, and Beau is so absolutely fucking _gone_ for this girl that she doesn’t even recoil at the compliment for once, just lets it wash through her, filling her, and then she’s coming with a sob.

She goes to wipe her hand off, but Jester catches her by the wrist and licks her fingers. There’s a look of deep concentration on Jester's face as she considers the taste.

“Oh, I like that,” Jester says.

“You’re going to kill me if you keep doing that,” Beau says honestly, her voice barely more than a croak.

Beau told Dairon that she didn’t think Jester was dangerous, but she might have been wrong — the smile Jester gives her then _feels_ pretty fucking dangerous.

“So was that enough of a demonstration for you?” Beau says, closing her eyes, so she doesn’t have to deal with the sight of Jester licking Beau’s fingers.

Jester hums. “I wasn’t really paying attention, actually, could you do that last part again?”

Beau opens her eyes just long enough to confirm that Jester is screwing with her, and then she closes them again. “Absolutely not,” she says.

“Oh well, I’ll just have to give it my best shot,” Jester says, and then she’s dragging her still-wet fingers across Beau’s clit _just_ the way Beau likes, like she’s a goddamn natural.

It turns out that Jester’s best shot is actually pretty fucking good. Beau would say that it’s unfair, except it’s all being put to her benefit, so she can’t really complain. 

That is, until Jester starts _teasing_ her. She draws back just as Beau’s getting to the good part, breaks her rhythm just as Beau begins to teeter over the edge. At first, Beau thinks Jester is doing it by accident and then she looks at Jester’s face, her eyes warm and bright and _so full of shit_ that Beau realizes that she’s doing it on purpose.

“What the fuck, Jes,” Beau says, completely broken. She keeps trying to move back against Jester’s hand, to get pressure where she needs to, and Jester gives her what she wants for like five seconds before drawing back again.

“I’m sorry, you just look so good like this. I want to keep you like this,” Jester says, and it would be sweet except Beau feels like every single nerve is on fire, and also she’s going to die if Jester doesn’t let her come soon.

She can barely remember her own _name_ right now, but she sure can remember Jester’s, because it’s all she can say right now, chanting it over and over with increasing desperation like it’s a prayer she’s begging to have answered. 

If any of the Gentleman’s spies are around, they’re definitely going to know that his daughter is in the middle of fucking her. Beau is _not_ being quiet.

“All right, all right,” Jester laughs, giving in at last. “Come on, Beau, I’ve got you,” she says, and she presses her fingers just right, circling her clit, and Beau can’t help it — she _screams_.

“Was that okay?” Jester asks afterwards.

“Ask me again when my brain feels less like it got trampled by horses,” Beau says. “Yes, it was fucking okay, holy shit.”

Jester laughs a little. “I’m glad,” she says, and then she pulls Beau up against her side, her arm draped over her so they can still be touching as Beau recovers.

They sleep for a bit and then fuck all over again. Jester seems to have an insatiable curiosity about everything, asking Beau questions without shame — how many fingers she prefers, whether she likes it when Jester touches her mouth, whether it’s okay if Jester bites Beau’s ear. 

Beau finds out very quickly that there are very few things she _doesn’t_ like, when it comes to Jester.

“Oh, it’s dawn,” Jester says, after they’re spent again. Beau opens her eyes to find that Jester is right — there’s a pale blue light coming in through the window, and she can hear the quiet sounds of the city waking up.

Jester goes to the window and opens it, leaning out. Beau joins her, bringing a blanket off the bed so she can wrap both of them in it. The sky is a beautiful pale purple and blue, the edges of it tinged with pink from the east.

“You know, I’ve never just watched the sunrise like this,” Beau says.

“You haven’t?” Jester says in surprise. She laughs a little, quietly.

“What’s funny?” Beau says, nudging her.

“It’s nice to share something with you for the first time. You’ve seen so many of _my_ first times,” Jester says. “I get to return the favor.”

“We don’t have to stop at a sunrise,” Beau says. “We can go wherever, do whatever.”

“You mean an adventure?” Jester says. She yawns. “I think I’m too tired to go on an adventure right now.”

“We’ll go to sleep first,” Beau says. They watch the sky turn from purple to streaked magenta.

“How far is Nicodranas from here?” Jester asks.

“I think it takes a week or so by ship,” Beau says. “Why?”

“I want to go there,” Jester says. “To see my mom.”

“When’s the last time you saw her?” Beau asks.

Jester’s eyes go distant. “When I was very little. She sends me presents every year for my birthday, though. Look.” Jester shrugs the blanket off of her goes to her bag. She pulls out a jewelry box, and opens it. Beau sucks in a breath. It’s a small fortune in gold and jewels.

“I was thinking we could sell these and use the money to go there,” Jester says. “Do you think it’s enough?”

Beau’s no expert on jewelry, but she’s pretty sure the stuff in here could buy _ten_ ships. “Yeah, it definitely is,” she says.

“So you’ll come with me, then?” Jester says. “If you don’t want to, if you want to stay here with the monks, I understand. I can go by myself. But I — I want you to come with me.”

“I told Dairon that I was leaving, Jes,” Beau tells her. “Of course I’ll go with you. I’ve never been to Nicodranas.”

“So it’ll be another first?” Jester says hopefully.

Beau smiles, and pulls Jester into her arms again. “Yeah. It’ll be another first.”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/star_strung).


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